ACEN taps Singaporean firms to advance retirement of coal-fired plant in PH

Transition credits will be used to decommission the Ayala firm’s Batangas coal plant.

The Philippines’ ACEN Corp. has inked a memorandum of understanding with GenZero and Keppel Ltd. to accelerate the retirement of the 246-megawatt (MW) South Luzon Thermal Energy Corporation (SLTEC) coal-fired power plant (CFPP) in Batangas.

According to the Ayala-led firm, it will work with its partners to study the utilisation of transition credits (TC) to facilitate the project’s implementation. The origination and sale of TCs will help to accelerate the decommissioning of the coal plant by 10 years, and also support transition initiatives, ACEN said.

“CFPPs are the single largest source of carbon emissions globally. Southeast Asia is home to the fourth largest CFPP fleet in the world, which is also amongst the youngest with an average age of less than 15 years,” ACEN said.

“The early retirement of CFPPs, such as SLTEC, is therefore a critical step for the region towards achieving the Paris Agreement goals and global net zero targets by 2050,” it added.

Once the SLTEC facility is replaced with a clean energy despatch facility, ACEN said it will be one of the first converted CFPPs in the world to generate TCs. 

The parties will also look into developing solutions and an economic model of the coal-to-clean transition focused on the replacement of the 246 MW baseload of the CFPP with a mid-merit Integrated Renewables and Energy Storage System consisting of solar plant and battery storage.

The project will be implemented with the Rockefeller Foundation’s Coal to Clean Credit Initiative and the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Transition Credits Coalition.